All language subtitles for 02-WhatIsCinematicLighting.mp4

So let's kind of break apart.

What is

cinematic lighting what's this idea of
cinematic lighting.

And

it covers this really wide swath

of movies.

And cinema it's been around for

well over 100 years, and it's gone
through a lot of different iterations

of style and mood and expression.

And

that with, you know, keeping that in
mind, we're going to try to simplify

this idea of cinematic lighting into a
few key elements and some generalities.

And don't beat me up too hard.

If something isn't 100 percent true all
the time, you can always do something

new and different.

And that's what evolving the medium is
really about at the end of the day.

But we're going to talk about the

more general ways

that cinematic lighting can occur.

But before we dig into that, I want to
take you through a little bit of a

history of

the early days up to when cinematic
lighting kind of changed into what we

now really associate it to be.

And so this is an old image from 1926.

This is from a movie called metropolis,
which is

a groundbreaking, way ahead of its time
film, and it's totally worth watching

if you haven't seen it in the few
different

cuts of it that still exist.

But it actually starts a little bit
before that.

Cinematic lighting has evolved
massively over time, and it's always

been dependent upon certain
considerations,

things that are stylistically popular
at a time, or technical limitations, or

what was available to them to be able
to work with.

Before Hollywood, before even days,
like this, cinematic lighting was

mostly natural.

When you're looking at the loomier
brothers and malais and these very

early filmmakers, they actually created
a lot of these movies in giant glass

houses to get as much natural light
into the scene as possible, because the

film was so sensitive and needed a lot
of light.

But it didn't take long before the

movie industry kind of kicked up into
full swing.

People saw how lucrative it was, and
you started to have a lot more

things that were developed to achieve
what they needed to do.

And so it wasn't long before lighting
went full artificial

with how a lot of these films were
being done.

And this was probably as early as the
nineteen teens and 20s.

But

with Hollywood being a very formal
industry, and it was about creating

this machine,

this was kind of how they were able to
pump out a lot of films, they could

control the environment.

So they did a lot of work in studios,
and it gave them full control.

But because the film needed lots and
lots of light for exposure, the lights were

really powerful, and they just threw
tons and tons of lights at the

environment, because they were really
just trying to create exposure.

And those early days of lighting, the
light didn't necessarily

have to feel like it was tied to any
real scenic element.

And so you look in a scene like this,
there's no point of reference for the

light it's pretty.

We can recognize that it looks
interesting and it looks graphic, but

it's not necessarily meant to look or
feel

real to anything in particular.

This is

another really good example of that
same idea.

This is supposed to be outside.

If you were to kind of break it down,
you look at the ground, she's got

several different shadows from a bunch
of different directions.

So again, the light is not really
motivated by anything, that's particularly

grounded in reality.

And by the 1930s,

this is 1939,

you started to see a lot of something
called 3 point lighting, where you're

using a key of fill and a rimlight to
kind of cut your subject out of the

background it's creating that triangle,
right?

And so this is kind of where the early
days of lighting began.

And the main

motivation behind that 3 point light
was to do something called figure

lighting, which was about separating
the figure from the background.

You're trying to, there's always been a
consideration that filmmakers and

photographers have to contend with as
they are creating images,

the photograph, the film, it is a two
dimensional plane.

And you're always trying to create
depth,

or you're trying to show that the flat
image looks more than just flat.

Or how do you tell where someone should
be looking?

What are the considerations you have to
make visually to show

what's important in the frame?

And so figure lighting, 3 point lining,
was a way to do this.

We use highlight and shadow to define
depth,

to show,

to show where the subject should be
looking, to show depth.

This evolved a little bit more.

We take a look at the still fray, or
this animated

gift from Gilda.

And so this is taking that idea of
figure lighting, or 3 point lighting,

to the extreme, and it kind of creates
this

idea of glamour

lighting.

And that's this old Hollywood

glamour thing.

It was a big, big production and it was
about making their stars and their

starlits look as good as they could.

Like.

That was the entire purpose and
motivation of this, kind of, like that

old Hollywood light.

And there's no grounding of reality

here.

I mean, there are candles, there are
lamps

and all of these other things in the
scene, and yet she's twirling around

with this beautiful rim light, and she
just looks amazing.

But it's not really about making it look

real.

It's just about making your subject
look fabulous.

It's about enhancing beauty.

And it was pretty heavily inspired by
the photography of the time.

When you look at the way these old
stars and starlits were photographed,

the lighting is very, very reminiscent

of that.

Kind of, evolving that into a slightly
different direction.

Was film new r.

And this was regularly tied to the idea
of making people look good, but it took

it to a much more dramatic direction.

And you can see that the rimlights, the
cutout, it's about this very graphic, bold

way to light.

it was driven by the narrative, so
you'd have a spotlight from the corner

of the hallway creating the light in
the scene.

Sometimes it was a little bit more
exaggerated, like this.

This isn't really particularly grounded
in reality, but it really looks good.

So that was really what was especially
important.

And so it's really about this interplay
of light and dark.

And that was a common motif in the
story,

right?

So this exaggerated sense of highlight
and shadow, that was about what the

narratives were, about the way you
would express these characters.

And so the light was a reflection of
that, with the glamour lighting, it was

a reflection of the characters